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To play this faction, select Night Elves with a 90% handicap.
Faction Overview
Buildings and Units
Medias & Screenshots
Changelog
Credits
Lore Critters are done being bullied by every race and started a global revolution, uniting to finally push back on their oppressors. Core Mechanic This faction is greatly affected by the Night and Day cycle.
Every units is either Diurnal or Nocturnal.
During the day:
Diurnal units will gain sight range, damage and movement speed.
Diurnal heroes will upgrade their stats and/or abilities.
During the night:
Nocturnal units will gain sight range, hit points and armor.
Nocturnal heroes will upgrade their stats and/or abilities.
The Critter Revolution tends to be more defensive on the night, and offensive during the day.
Strength and Weaknesses
Strengths
Weaknesses
+ Good defense tools to defend the base, even more during the night. + Very high offensive potential, especially during the day. + Very strong end-game army with costly but powerful units. + Can Easily expand thanks to the hoarder being able to receive golds.
- Many building have unarmored defense during the day, making them very vulnerable. - Lack of lumber harvesting building, making workers run a long way in mid and late game. Somewhat compensated by the Resilient Seed item. - Predictable attack timing with day time. - Many things don't work on mechanical units. Hopefully, there aren't that many full mechanical armies.
Shelter
Small World
Sage's Frozen tree
Ice ramp
Pig Farm
Council of Heroes
Watering Hole
Preserved Ice
Flowering Shrub
Nest Tree
Hoarder Nest
Description Primary structure, used to train Skinks and receive gathered resources.
Can be upgraded to Haven and then Sanctuary to enable the production of additional types of structures and units. Trained Units
Skink
Description Basic worker unit. Can harvest gold and lumber, build structures and Repair.
Great at scouting thanks to its Fleeing Prey ability. Attacks land units and trees. Abilities Fleeing Prey: When not working, this unit moves at great speed.
Description Trains insects and others creatures of the forest on the smaller scale.
Available units:
Roach
Beaver
Giant Sand Worms
Available upgrades:
Roach Infestation
Adaptative Behavior
Structural Weakness
A Thousand Bites.
Logs, rocks or shrooms, many creatures live unseen and ignored by the big folks who thought they would never pose a threat. How mistaken they were... Trained Units
Roach
Description A ground nocturnal insect, great at fighting groups of organic enemies.
Has Putrid Smell ability.
Can learn Roach Infestation ability. Attacks land and air units. Abilities Putrid Smell: While in combat, the roach secrets a putrid smell in an area around itself, dealing up to 5 damage per second to all enemies, depending on how close they are. Affects land and air organic units.
Damage can stack from multiple roaches. A unit is considered in combat if it dealt or received damage in the last 3 seconds. Roach Infestation: When dying, spawns two Small Roaches on the battlefield. Attack land units.
Beaver
Description A ground nocturnal rodent, good at demolition.
Can learn Adaptative Behavior and Structural Weakness abilities. Attacks land units and trees.
Thought using wood for your building was great idea ? Think again. Abilities Adaptative Behavior: This unit is both diurnal and nocturnal.
During the day, it gains a huge damage increase.
During the night, it gains sight range, hit points and armor. Structural Weakness: Reduces targeted enemy structure's armor by 3 for 30 seconds. Reset duration if casted upon an already weakened structure.
Giant Sand Worm
Description A tanky diurnal Giant Sand Worm that is extremely costly to raise, but can rampage in enemy territory.
Has Underground Attack.
Can learn A Thousand Bites. Attacks land units.
It always comes as a surprise that small worms can, when protected long enough, grow to such size. Those who survive this encounter will think twice before killing a worm ever again. Abilities Underground Attack: Dives into the ground, becoming invulnerable, then resurfaces 1 to 3 seconds later at targeted point, dealing 50 damage to every ground enemy unit and stunning them for 2 seconds. Can go through walls and bodies of water.
Time before resurface depends on distance traveled. A Thousand Bites: Consumes an enemy land unit, inflicting upon it a thousand bites and dealing 15 + 1% target max HP damage per second to it.
Lasts 30 secs.
If the target dies by this ability, heals the Sand Worm for 25% of its max HPs, and reset its CDs. If the Giant Sand Worms is killed while the consumed unit is still being consumed, the unit that was devoured will be released.
Description Contains many upgrades for units and buildings.
Available upgrades:
Attack and armor upgrades for all units
Ice Solidification
Staff of Invisiblity
Boar Summoning.
A frozen tree, containing knowledge of a Sage of an ancient time that could give the Revolution the edge in its war.
Description Defensive structure where penguins slide on ice to throw themself at their ennemies.
Has Bouncing Penguins ability.
Attacks land and air units.
Penguins are simple: penguin see an ice ramp, penguin slide on it. Sometimes, penguin do collide with enemy too, that's a nice bonus.
Description Provides food, which increases the maximum number of units that can be trained.
Can learn Boar Summoning.
Many nations exploit poor innocent pigs, raising them for slaughter. The revolution tries to take over as many farms as possible, protecting the innocents.
Description Summons Heroes. Revives slain Heroes.
The first meeting bewteen the leaders of the revolution took place at such a Megalithic monument. Since then, one is constructed at every head quarters. Trained Units
Annoying Fly
Description A squichy nocturnal flying hero that can go in an out of battle to harass his enemies.
Can learn Strike and Retreat, Dodging Tactics, Disturbance and Red Slash. Attacks land and air units. Small, harmless creature that no one really noticed. Until the Great Revolution gave it a goal, a mission: deprives the enemy of its sleep, make chaos in its ranks, and assassinate key targets.
Abilities Nocturnal: The annoying fly thrives during the night, upgrading its abilities.
Night bonuses
Strike And Retreat: Increases fear duration by 0.5 second.
Dodging Tactics: Increases chance of dodging by 5% + 1% per hero level.
Disturbance: The first attack deals 33% bonus damage.
Red Flash: attacks deal +20% damage.
Strike And Retreat:
Allows the Annoying Fly to become invisible, move through units, and move faster for a short period a time.
When the Annoying Fly attacks a unit to break invisibility, it will fear its target. Level 1 - 3 seconds stealth, 0.75 second fear, 15 mana, 10 cd. Level 2 - 4 seconds stealth, 1 second fear, 10 mana, 9 cd. Level 3 - 5 seconds stealth, 1.25 second fear, 5 mana, 8 cd. Dodging Tactics:
When activated, drains 7.0 mana per second to grants a chance of avoiding incoming attacks. Level 1 - 20% chance Level 2 - 35% chance Level 3 - 50% chance Disturbance:
Whenever the annoying fly attack an organic enemy, he disturbs its target, dealing bonus enhanced physical damage. Each consecutive attack reduce the damage by 50%. Reset when switching target or after 5 seconds without attacking. Level 1 - 15 bonus damage Level 2 - 25 bonus damage Level 3 - 35 bonus damage Red Flash:
The annoying fly teleports himself to the designated area, and then strikes up to 60 times over 3 seconds at random targets.
Each strike deals 15 enhanced physical damage. Can damage ground and air units.
Cannot target structures. Enhanced physical damage is not reduced by armor or magical immunity.
Penguin King
Description Warrior nocturnal Hero, exceptional at defense.
Can learn Penguin Slide, Royal Nap, Cold Treatment Aura and King's Army. Attacks land units. First to rise against the massacres happening on Northrend, this Penguin became a king among its peers, leading them for their independance. Abilities Nocturnal: The Penguin King thrives during the night, upgrading its abilities.
Night bonuses
Increased mana regeneration
Penguin Slide: Increases range and knockback range.
Royal Nap: Doubled healing. Allied nocturnal units will not be put to sleep.
King's Army: Summons 2 more Penguin Workers.
Penguin Slide:
Creates an ice path in a straight line. After a small delay, launches a penguin to slide on it, dealing damage and knocking back ground enemies hit. Level 1 - 65 damage. Level 2 - 130 damage, increased range. Level 3 - 195 damage, increased range again. Royal Nap:
The King decides to take a nap, and forces all units around him to do so as well for the next 5 seconds.
While sleeping, the king is healed. Level 1 - Small area, 25 HPs/second. Level 2 - Medium area, 50 HPs/second. Level 3 - Large area, 75 HPs/second. Cold Treatment:
The Penguin give the Cold Treatment to nearby enemies, reducing their movement speed and their attack speed. Level 1 - movement reduced by 20%, attack speed reduced by 15%. Level 2 - movement reduced by 30%, attack speed reduced by 20%. Level 3 - movement reduced by 40%, attack speed reduced by 25%. King's Army:
Summons an army of 3 Ice Guards, 2 Penguin Workers and 1 Penguin Cannon for 90 seconds.
White Stag
Description Mystical semi-ranged diurnal Hero, adept at using nature spells.
Can learn Thorn Roots, Forest Call, Leaf Whirl, and Crystal Forest. Attacks land units. A wise stag that taught and enlightened all critters of Ashenvale region, guiding them to a better world were their rights mattered and nature was respected as a whole. Abilities Diurnal: The White Stag thrives during the day, upgrading its stats and abilities.
Day bonuses
Mana regeneration greatly increased.
Deers followers join the White Stag twice as fast.
Deer Followers: Deers come in aid to the White Stag, increasing the effects of its abilities.
Gains 1 deer every 30 seconds while out of combat. Maximum 10 deers.
A unit enters combat when it deals or receives damage. Thorn Roots:
Grows thorns that rush in a straight lines, entangling the first few enemies hit, dealing damage to them over the duration. Level 1 - 3 targets, 6 seconds, 10 dmg/sec. Level 2 - 4 targets, 9 seconds, 15 dmg/sec. Level 3 - 5 targets, 12 seconds, 20 dmg/sec.
Up to 4 deers followers can also create roots that stop at the first target for half the duration and damage. These deers will then disappear in the wild. Forest Call:
The White Stag bellows, giving bonus attack damage and bonus mana regeneration to all nearby allies.
Lasts 30 seconds. Level 1 - 15% attack damage, 0.4 mana/sec. Level 2 - 22.5% attack damage, 0.55 mana/sec. Level 3 - 30% attack damage, 0.7 mana/sec.
Gains 1-3 deers followers depending on spell level and all deers followers will gain a small semi-ranged attack for the duration. Leaf Whirl:
Creates a leaf whirl around a target friendly unit that gives them armor and slows melee units that attack them.
Lasts 45 seconds. Level 1 - Adds 3 armor. Level 2 - Adds 5 armor. Level 3 - Adds 7 armor.
If casted on an allied hero, the first time it takes more than 15 damage, 1 deer will sacrifices itself, absorbing the damage. Crystal Forest:
Channels for up to 30 seconds to create a giant crystal forest around him over time.
Every deer follower will immediately spawn a Crystal Tree at their position. Crystal Trees are immobile, invulnerable, do not block movement and can attack enemies with magic damage. They will remain as long as the White Stag is channeling.
The G.O.A.T.
Description Warrior diurnal hero that can jump into the fight and thrives in a duel of heroes.
Can learn Charge In, Reigning Champion, Battle Scars and Duel. Attacks land units. During the Great Revolution of Lordaeron, the G.O.A.T lead the charge of the armed rebel forces, challenging every great champions that tried to subdue them, defeating elfs, orcs and humans alike. Abilities Diurnal: The G.O.A.T. thrives during the day, upgrading its stats and abilities.
Day bonuses
Gains +1 to all stats per hero level.
Charge In: deals +50% damage.
Duel: disarms the target for 3 seconds.
Charge In:
Dashes on the targeted unit, dealing damage and stunning them. Level 1 - Short Range, 50 damage, 3 seconds stun. Level 2 - Medium Range, 150 damage, 4 seconds stun. Level 3 - Long Range, 250 damage, 5 seconds stun. Can target and damage (but not stun) magic immune targets. Reigning Champion:
Attacks deal bonus magic damage, and even more against heroes. Level 1 - +5% damage, 15% against heroes. Level 2 - +10% damage, 30% against heroes. Level 3 - +15% damage, 45% against heroes. Battle Veteran:
The G.O.A.T is so used to be in the heat of battle that he shrugs off incoming melee attacks, reducing their damage. Level 1 - 7 damage reduction. Level 2 - 14 damage reduction. Level 3 - 21 damage reduction. Can't reduce damage below 1. Duel:
Declares a duel on the targeted enemy hero, creating an arena around them.
For the next 20 seconds or until one of them dies, both heroes won't be able to leave the duel arena, and will take damage only from each other.
If the G.O.A.T kills its enemy during the duel, he gains +2 permanent strength.
Description Trains forest and meadow creatures.
Available units:
Sheep
Wizarding Lizard
Bunny Reaper
Available upgrades:
Nightmare Curse
Staff Mastery
Carrot Juice.
Those who were hunted, may it be for their meat or as simple trophees, are now the hunters. The former hunting spot is now a training ground, and one of the most dangerous place for trappers. Trained Units
Sheep
Description An innocent sheep. Has the Sacrificial Lamb ability.
Can learn Nightmare Curse ability. Can't attack. Limited to 7 sheeps. Sheeps were often thought as perfect victims that would never rebel. In a way, they still are, but are now under the protection of the Glorious Revolution where they learnt that being slaughtered wasn't a fatality and that they could, in fact, strike back. Abilities Sacrificial Lamb: Passive: On death, heal all nearby allies for 150 hit points. Sheeps are immune to damage from friendly units. Active: Forces the closest enemy unit to attack this unit. Nightmare Curse: On death, has a 20% chance to summon a Nightmare Sheep for 60 seconds to attack your enemies. Attack land and air units.
Wizarding Lizard
Description A diurnal caster, with great offensive abilities.
Has Thunder Fury ability.
Can learn Burning Defenses and Permanent Hex. Attacks land and air units. Once, a skink picked up a priest magical staff. How he figured out how to use it still remains a mystery, but his dabbling with mana made him evolve. Since then, he gave staffs to other of his brethern and taught them what he discovered, creating an order of Wizards among its people. Abilities Thunder Fury: Increases a target friendly unit's damage by 25%.
Lasts 60 seconds. Burning Defenses: Reduces a target enemy unit's armor by 5and gives vision of that unit.
Lasts 90 seconds. Permanent Hex: Turns the targeted enemy unit in a frog, then takes permanent control of it. Permanent Hex pierces spell immunity, but cannot be used on Heroes, or creeps above level 3.
Bunny Reaper
Description Powerful but vulnerable diurnal melee unit. Has Hare-vest passive.
Can learn Carrot Juice ability. Attacks land units. Abilities Carrot Juice: Drinks carrot juice, causing this unit to attack 50% faster, and move 20% faster.
Lasts 15 seconds. Hare-vest: The bunny's scythe strike through their target, dealing 20% of their damage to enemies near the primary attacked unit.
Also, each attack, the bunny harvests 1 carrot. When reaching 10 carrots, it consumes them, healing them for 50 HPs.
Description Trains creatures thriving in cold environnement.
Available units:
Ice Guard
Penguin Cannon.
Available upgrades:
Frozen Defenses
Ice Shell.
Penguins were thought to be too cute to be a real danger. This perception changed a lot when the Northrend Revolution started, and even more when penguin kamikaze started using captured cannons to throw themself at enemy lines. Trained Units
Ice Guard
Description Tanky nocturnal semi-ranged unit, good at defending your base.
Can learn Frozen Defenses and Solid Ice. Attacks land units. Abilities Frozen Defenses: Gives 3 additional armor to nearby friendly structures. Solid Ice: During the night, a solid layer of ice covers this unit, giving it bonus armor and making it fortified.
Penguin Cannon
Description Long-range nocturnal siege weaponry. Effective against buildings but slow and vulnerable.
Can learn the Ice Shell ability. Attacks land units and trees. The Northrend Revolution took those deadly cannons from the dwarfs. Unable to mass produce the required projectiles, they were nearly abandoned, until some brave penguins volunteered to be used as missiles. Abilities Ice Shelll: Thrown penguins are envelopped in ice that freezes buildings upon impact, temporarily stoping their activities.
Lasts 5 seconds.
Description The Flowering Shrub perfume attracts pollinating creatures.
Available units:
Bee
Moth.
Available upgrades:
Aerial Maneuver
Deadly Pollen
Enchanted Moth Chrysalis.
Overlooked by many living creatures, flowers and their ecosystem are rich in diversity, with a great capability of becoming deadly. Trained Units
Bee
Description Flying melee diurnal pollinator.
Can learn the Deadly Pollen ability. Attacks land organic units.
Can be upgraded to attack air organic units. At first, bees were having something like a business relationship with the big folks: honey against shelter. Fair and simple. But overtime, their life condition deteriorated, pushing them to rebel. Abilities Deadly Pollen: Carries pollen from deadly flowers that deals 8 damage per second, for 5 seconds. Doesn't stack.
Moth
Description A flying nocturnal caster, with great defensive abilities.
Has Medicinal Pollen ability.
Can learn Deadly Pollen, Mana Cocoon and Kaleidoscope. Attacks land and air units. Abilities Medicinal Pollen: Restores 30 hit points to up to 12 nearby friendly non-mechanical units. Deadly Pollen: Carries pollen from deadly flowers that deals 8 damage per second, for 5 seconds. Doesn't stack. Mana Cocoon: Creates a mana cocoon that protects nearby allies in close range, giving them 3 bonus armor.
Lasts 60 seconds. The bonus armor stacks with others auras like devotion aura. Kaleidoscope: Create a kaleidoscope of butterfly at the targeted location.
Butterlies reduce attack speed by 50% and movement speed by 75% for 7 seconds, and deal 65% of their current hit points to summoned units. Affects land and air organic units.
Description A tree, perfect for various birds to make a home in.
Available units:
Raven
Snowny Owl
Available upgrades:
Hoarding Instinct
Moon Rays
A great tree can accomodate several bird nests, even from different species. Trained Units
Raven
Description Swift flying unit.
Has the Feather Storm ability.
Can learn Treasure Spotting. Attacks land and air units. Abilities Feather Storm: When entering combat during the day, throw a storm of feathers around itself that each deal 50 magic damage to enemy they hit. Cooldown of 5 seconds, starts when leaving combat. Affects air organic units only. A unit enters combat when it deals or receives damage. Treasure Spotting: Dives on the targeted enemy structure to steal 30 gold from them and bring it back to a Hoarder Nest.
While carrying gold, the raven is slowed by 35%. If the Raven dies with gold on him, the gold will be dropped at the nearest accessible land point as an item, available for anyone to take it.
Snowy Owl
Description Flying nocturnal magical owl.
Has Perfect Nocturnal Sight.
Can learn Moon Rays. Attacks land units only. Abilities Perfect Nocturnal Sight: During the night, passively reveals invisible units on a large zone. Moon Rays: When entering combat during night, moon rays fall upon nearby enemies units and structures, dealing 40 magic damage to each target. Cooldown of 7 seconds, starts when leaving combat. Affects land and air units. A unit enters combat when it deals or receives damage.
Description Creates a shop with purchasable items.
The items available depend upon what level of upgrade your Shelter has (Shelter, Haven, Sanctuary) and which buildings you have.
Skinks can return gold to the Hoarder Nest.
Many birds like to find, collect and stock pile of shiny objects and treasures. Give them even more shiny gold coins, and they might let you take some of their possessions.
2026-05-30 - v1.00: first upload.
Credits go to a lots of people Feel free to point mistakes and or missing credits.
Roach feels very weak early on, having a hard time creeping
The whole Diurnal/Nocturnal system is great, though it feels complicated when starting out
Owl icon is green, probably wrong setting for the icon
Beaver is an interesting early on siege, but unless rushing (and with Roach being very weak, not really doable), I don't see the ability being useful?
The Flyer item feels mandatory due to Roach issue
Moth is an interesting support/spellcaster role, remind me of statue but at the same time also a good spellcaster
Some hero abilities feel very lackluster, most notable the Penguin King's launcher ability
I think there should be a cap on reduction for Annoying Fly third ability, makes the fly feels weak when trying to get a target down and force too much micro on it for maximum effectiveness
Raven hoarding ability can be used on unfinished nests, at least from my observation
I think there's visual issues with Skink gathering gold, though I'm not sure if it intervenes much with gold earning
Are there detectors for daytime? Owl detection only function during the night
As the developer, how would you approach this faction build and what would be the critical turning point for it to steamroll?
My personal favorite in this faction would be Snow Owl (that moonray is amazing! Sad it only proc once every battle)
Roach can be a disturbing early game if only their infestation can keep on coming
Roach can be really strong if you make the most of their AoE damage.
I did nerfed a few times due to how easy it felt to creep and thought they were at a nice spot, so I'm kinda surprised you felt that way.
I'm curious about how many roach you had to take your first few camps, and what your pathing was.
I guess Roaches aren't getting any love, even in game
4. Beaver is an interesting early on siege, but unless rushing (and with Roach being very weak, not really doable), I don't see the ability being useful?
You mean, the Structural Weakness ability ?
As you said, it offers a bit of offensive power early as Roaches won't do a thing against building.
This ability makes it also nice, in my humble opinion, to have one or two beavers in your army mid/late game to burst a strategic building on skirmishes.
It was meant to enable a fast clear or harass disrupting strategy on enemy workers, but given your impression on Roaches, I can understand why you would feel that way.
I agree that Penguin Slide is on the weaker side in visual effects and feel. I do think with a bit more work it could be much more satisfying.
Would be curious to know what other abilities would need more attention in your opinion.
8. I think there should be a cap on reduction for Annoying Fly third ability, makes the fly feels weak when trying to get a target down and force too much micro on it for maximum effectiveness
There is technically a minimum damage of 1 per spell level.
I agree that the annoying fly requires a lot of micro to really use all of its potential, but on the other hand, a cap on damage reduction would require to lower the first burst of damage, otherwise it would be way too strong.
Maybe I could give it a max damage reduction at night instead of the current bonus ?
Yeah, sometimes, Skinks will slow down to have "normal" harvesting speed and continuous chain of workers from Shelter to the mine, and other times, they will rush, and wait around the gold mine. I don't think it changes the gold earning, but I admit I didn't have time to do a proper investigation and calculations to check.
I did quite a few games with a friend of mine. Here is how I played. Keep in mind that a good player will probably find way better way to play this faction.
First are Council of Heroes + Small World + Pig Farms, and workers. There is probably a path building building Hoarder Nest to get flyers.
I personally had not much issues with Roaches, so they were my main force until getting Haven.
I prefer starting with Annoying Fly (I usually go Disturbance > Strike and Retreat > Disturbance 2 > Dodging tactics) or White Stag (Thorns Roots > Leaf Whirl > Thorns Root 2 > Forest Call), for easier creeping.
Creeping path was usually green camp > gnoll medium camp > mine camp > goblin laboratory or shops camps.
Green camp is kinda free imo.
Gnoll camp is easier to deal with because:
Annoying make very good use of its disturbance ability on them
White Stag can entangle huge percentage of the camp power.
When you get Haven, I usually go for Flowering Shrub because I like my bees and Moths.
Depending on how much I messed up my economy, I'll get Watering Hole if I feel like having more offensive power, or go for Solid Ice and/or Boar Summoning if need defensive power against an harassing's opponent.
I do feel like the G.O.A.T. is great second hero overall, but you probably can chose others.
Late game, I had two main options in mind:
Snow Owl centered army.
This means you'll be attacking at night.
This is probably a more hit-and-run style of battle, to make good use of the moons rays
Strong support from Moths to slow enemies
Regen your life while waiting for moon rays to come back in fight
Giant Sand Worms centered army.
This means you attack during the day.
This is more an all-in style of battle
Your main carries will be melee, with Worms and Bunnies
You'll want a strong support from Wizarding Lizards.
Of course, it would be best if your heroes match your army in term of day cycle power.
The critical turning point is kinda hard to say, but I would say successfully having one or two Giant Sand Worms is something that would definitely destroy many armies as long as they're made mostly of lands units and that those two beasts have enough support to allow them a infinite cycle of Thousand Bites > regen > next target.
Any hero level 6 should have a really strong impact on the battlefield, with maybe an exception for the G.O.A.T. as its ultimate exists to prevent the enemy hero from having an impact.
Tiers 2 & 3 upgrades that get more values on cycle (Radiant claws and Luminescent Pelt) could also be huge power spikes depending on your army.
Roach can be really strong if you make the most of their AoE damage.
I did nerfed a few times due to how easy it felt to creep and thought they were at a nice spot, so I'm kinda surprised you felt that way.
I'm curious about how many roach you had to take your first few camps, and what your pathing was.
I guess Roaches aren't getting any love, even in game
I agree that Penguin Slide is on the weaker side in visual effects and feel. I do think with a bit more work it could be much more satisfying.
Would be curious to know what other abilities would need more attention in your opinion.
Thanks for the video
I understand much more why you struggle early.
I feel like you're under-exploiting the annoying fly a LOT Might not be you go-to hero if micro managing isn't your cup of tea.
From what I saw, you were against normal computer, so I decided to record a game with normal computer as well.
This game is FAR from being perfect (how much time did i wait before making my 2nd hero ? Way too much. Did I forget to make the spell casters I wanted I built a specific building for ? Yep, indeed.), but maybe you could get something out of it.
It is tricky because with AoE you take down one unit slower, but tends to clear the whole camp faster.
So your tanking Roach might take more damage than a footman if you don't swap aggro.
Damn, that's weird, I took the icon for Scouting Owl lvl 3
I guess Reforged and classic don't have the same path for this icon, thus it can't take the old icon for SD users
Well, I guess I'll upload an other icon.
That would make the most OP tiers 1 unit in the game
Footmen have something like ~8.88 dps, archer have something like ~10.6 dps.
Roach do have 5 dps as magic damage which is arguably a stronger damage type.
Maybe I could increase damage at further range tho, to mitigate placement errors in battles.
Hey, Marchombre. As of this message, I'm currently doing a playtest of the faction and I noticed the following:
Hoarder's Nest
Beaver
Debug Mode
Adaptative Mode
Penguin King
The Hoarder's Nest doesn't have a hotkey bound to it.
The Beaver model doesn't have a camera object associated with it.
I noticed that pressing the Escape Key triggers an Escape-Key event where a message gets printed out.
Perhaps it's something related to monitoring for any location handle leaks?
I noticed that this upgrade has a slightly different key than expected based on its current position, since the faction appears to be going for the QWER control grid setup.
The Cold Treatment ability's 2nd level is learnable at level 2. Either the Requirement Level is 0 and below, or the Level Skip Requirement is not set to 0?
That said, I'm enjoying my playthrough with the Critters. I find the overall faction well-designed and engaging to play with. The use of the day / night cycle is quite unique for the currently ongoing contest (Techtree Contest 20) and I'm taking advantage of that for my playthrough. A solid contest entry, for sure.
(Sent this message out too early, so there might've been some empty section at the moment this message was sent.)
The Hoarder's Nest doesn't have a hotkey bound to it.
The Beaver model doesn't have a camera object associated with it.
I noticed that pressing the Escape Key triggers an Escape-Key event where a message gets printed out.
Perhaps it's something related to monitoring for any location handle leaks?
I noticed that this upgrade has a slightly different key than expected based on its current position, since the faction appears to be going for the QWER control grid setup.
The Cold Treatment ability's 2nd level is learnable at level 2. Either the Requirement Level is 0 and below, or the Level Skip Requirement is not set to 0?
That said, I'm enjoying my playthrough with the Critters. I find the overall faction well-designed and engaging to play with. The use of the day / night cycle is quite unique for the currently ongoing contest (Techtree Contest 20) and I'm taking advantage of that for my playthrough. A solid contest entry, for sure.
Warning: This video was recorded just a few moments when first version of this race was released. So the author may have changed some things after that, rendering some parts of my showcase inaccurate
When you expected to fight as stags or rabbits, but your army is full of cockroaches instead...
Well, well, well. Quite an unusual custom race, I would say! This is true "critter revolution" - creatures we play are quite small to withstand any other race on their own, but thanks to that, I was reminded how terrific a horde of cockroaches can be.
Brrr.
Overall, I enjoyed this theme; it included some nice ideas like "stag hero summoning stags and empowering locust stags" and other sweet things. Although you encourage tactic play "attack on day, defend at night", with normal AI you can mostly ignore this rule and smash them into pieces... Even if your early rush units, cockroaches, are not as strong as you may have thought.
Did you expect fluffy rabbits ? That's a revolution we're talking about ! Not some pyjama party
Sometimes, the end justify the means, and you must use some... dirty methods.
Well, well, well. Quite an unusual custom race, I would say! This is true "critter revolution" - creatures we play are quite small to withstand any other race on their own, but thanks to that, I was reminded how terrific a horde of cockroaches can be.
Brrr.
Overall, I enjoyed this theme; it included some nice ideas like "stag hero summoning stags and empowering locust stags" and other sweet things. Although you encourage tactic play "attack on day, defend at night", with normal AI you can mostly ignore this rule and smash them into pieces... Even if your early rush units, cockroaches, are not as strong as you may have thought.
Roaches are not really rush units, more harassing. Can be deadly against peons, but when hitting structures... Well let's say Roaches were always way much scarier for the inhabitant of the house than for its walls
So, full review over there. TLDR; A mess of a balance, but has a way to have its own identity.
General
Skink
Roach
Beaver
Sand worm
Sheep
Wizarding Lizard
Bunny Reaper
Moth
Owl
Ice Guard
Ice Ramp
Ice Solidification
Heroes
Items
General ☼ The lack of trivial early healing hurts a lot, especially when you need to creep. ☼ Your main building spawns at Tree of Life distance, thus you need 3/4 skins to gather at day/night, making your economy slightly too advantageous food-wise
Skink
It has two main problems : its speed and getting affected by upgrades.
The speed makes it much harder to raid and gives a way to scout much too easily.
You made them faster to compensate their lack of wood depot... why not just make the tech center a wood depot then ?
If you want it to skedaddle in danger, why not give it a temporary passive speed boost when receiving enemy damage ?
While you won't get much upgrades in the early game and late game DPS & spells outclass any armor they could manage to get, giving attack and armor upgrades to your workers is outside Warcraft 3 standards - I'm not completely against it per se however it doesn't give anything interesting.
You could also increase its day regen to 0.5 to match night elves and the average 0.25.
Why it has increased sight range ?
Roach
While I can understand the intent behind, there a lot of small issues with it ☼ You can't change the color & alpha of an attached effect, since it's tied to the target color & alpha strictly ☼ Particles effects aren't affected by alpha ☼ This is a thicc poison effect for such a low gameplay impact, that might saturate the battle and make it harder to distinguish ☼ In the triggers you are comparing the distances and not the square of distances. To compute a coordinate distance it uses a Square Root function which is expensive. Doing SquareRoot((x1-x2)²+(xy-y2)²) <= distance is the exact same equivalent as (x1-x2)²+(x1-y2)² <= distance² ☼ Another trick is to select units a bit further away, and compare the squared distance with (range + unit collision size)², so it catches up a bit more easily units ☼ The unit model is very small, making it even harder to spot in a fight ☼ The 0+1D1 hurts a lot, with such a low damage and AoE it makes fights quite hard to unfold. It is as tanky as a footman but has low effect on the battlefield. ☼ The Roach infestation is just free XP for enemy heroes. You spawn 2 level 2 roaches which are very easy to clear out. Even if the tech had its negative cost it is not even worth. I would have expected an evasion bonus to reflect its unkillable aspect. ☼ It's high scale value makes buffs on it enormous, which can be confusing ☼ It can attack air ?
This is how I would update it ☼ Scale decreased from 2.5 to 1 ☼ Model scale adjusted to be 3x bigger ☼ Base damage increased from 0 to 5 ☼ Damage per dice increased from 1 to 2 ☼ Cannot longer attack air ☼ Attack cooldown decreased from 2.9 to 1.9 ☼ Damage/Backswing point decreased from 0.5/0.5 to 0.2/0.2 ☼ Repair cost adjusted to its base cost ☼ HP regen increased from 0.25 to 0.5 ☼ Putrid smell ►► Base damage increased from 5/3/1 to 5 ►► No longer stacks ►► If not longer under the effect of the effect, it still receives 1 damage per second for 5 seconds ►► Effect adjusted so it is more transparent ►► New tier 2 tech to improve the following <<< Damage stacks by 1 if hit by a putrid spell less than 1 second ago from a different source than the first <<< The organic target has its attack speed reduced by 10% <<< On death the roach places a putrid source on its location for 15 seconds ☼ Roach infestation ►► Small roach spawn removed ►► Increases evasion to 15% ►► When killed, it has (number of nearby friendly roaches withing 300) chances over 5 to instantly regain all its HP instead of dying ; 180 seconds reload during which the evasion is disabled
Now it gets more versatile and better scales itself in late game ; with less XP feeding for the enemy. Its role is to soak up damage in front and dissuade bio forces to engage.
Beaver
This unit has a lot of flaws, and do not fit any game phases ; despite its originality. When your first unit is melee, we expect the second one to be ranged which is not the case there. The lack of Anti-Air hurts a lot your faction especially from air rushes. Small armor is strictly reserved for air units, which takes x2 from ranged attack. So your beaver has 250 effective HP against ranged units... and cannot hit them efficiently due to its purely melee ability.
As a cheap siege unit it's even worse. You have a raider with x8 less resistant to towers, 2x less DPS, high collision size (thus cannot stack much in melee) and a medium movement speed. Another problem is its very slow creation time.
This is how I would update it ☼ Like for the roach, reduce scale and update the model so it's bigger ☼ Both attacks enabled ☼ Base damage increased from 18/0 to 20/15 ☼ Number of dice adjusted from 2/0 to 1/1 ☼ Damage per dice adjusted from 3/0 to 4/3 ☼ Attack cooldown adjusted from 2/0 to 1.5/1.5 ☼ Attack one can target only structures ☼ Attack two can target ground, air, wards, debris ☼ Attack damage type set from siege/none to normal/pierce ☼ Attack two type set to missile ☼ Attack two projectile art set to dryad missile ☼ Attack two projectile speed increased from 0 to 1200 ☼ Attack two projectile arc increased from 0 to 0.15 ☼ Attack two range increased from 0 to 500 ☼ Armor changed from small to medium ☼ Attack sound changed from medium axe to Metal medium axe ☼ Cost adjusted from 185 25 3 30 to 190 25 3 25 ☼ Collision size reduced from 48 to 24 ☼ Structural Weakness ►► When attacking a structure, increases the ranged attack speed of the beaver by 25% for 20 seconds (it pillages sticks) ►► The first hit against the structure reduces armor by 3, then stacks with each attack by 0.1 up to 6 total ►► Passively increase damage against fortified armor by 300%
It is now a true ranged unit, with siege abilities and much more effective ! A spear thrower beaver makes more sense, since it can craft sticks into sharp edges. I also considered to make it a lumber gatherer, but the skins are enough and would increase a bit the complexity of the early game.
Sand worm
Holy mother of Dune ? This unit is such a waste of resources. 14 (!!!) food cost, abysmal DPS, slow, accessible in the late game. It fails at every role you gave it. May tank on paper but... 14 food ? With that you can get 6.5 knights with better DPS, speed and versatility... The thousands bits is unusable since you can only have few worms and it has such a slow cooldown. Yeah you can disable 4 units at once on paper but against your faction the enemy would rush your ass down so you won't get that upgrade. 75 seconds reload time is brutal, on a 1000 HP unit that's 25 damage per second, so it will be consumed in 40 seconds, which is impossible since the unit is expelled after 30 seconds... The multiple cargo slots are in fact useless. Furthermore you are... recreating the puked unit ? Why not simply hide the unit on devour then show it ? That could mess up some spell effects.
The enemy can just spam air units to exploit your lack of anti-air. Unless the enemy spams light unit and let them at range of your worm this unit has a tedious place in the roster. I would reject the fault to the lack of time to test the unit. This had the good cards in hand with the custom devour but terribly executed.
This is how I would rebalance the unit ☼ Both attacks enabled ☼ Base damage adjusted from 40/0 to 35/35 ☼ Number of dice increased from 2/0 to 2/2 ☼ Damage per dice increased from 5/0 to 7/5 ☼ Attack cooldown adjusted from 2.9/0 to 2.2/2.2 ☼ Attack two can target air ☼ Attack two damage type set to siege ☼ Attack two type set to missile (splash) ☼ Attack two projectile art set to Ancient Protector ☼ Attack two projectile speed increased from 0 to 900 ☼ Attack two projectile arc increased from 0 to 0.15 ☼ Attack two range increased from 0 to 600 ☼ Attack two AoE increased from 0/0/0 to 25/75/150 ☼ Attack two damage factor increased from 0/0 to 0.5/0.2 ☼ Attack two AoE targets set to enemy and air ☼ Movement speed increased from 250 to 270 ☼ Cost reduced from 460 175 14 95 to 360 125 8 65 ☼ Collision size reduced from 64 to 48 ☼ Level increased from 7 to 8 ☼ Armor reduced from 5 to 2 ☼ Armor type changed from medium to large ☼ Underground attack ►► Is now auto, by default enabled ►► Reload time decreased from 90 to 20 seconds ►► The stun can target magic immune (because in the lib they cannot) ►► Stun duration against resistant units reduced from 2 to 0.5 seconds (because in the lib it doesn't matter) ►► Has double damage against structures ►► Cannot longer target hidden units ☼ Thousand bites ►► Cargo slots changed from 4 to a total of 10 unit-levels (if level 0 counts as level 1) ►► Reload time reduced from 75 to 10 seconds ►► Digest damage reduced from 15HP +1% of the unit max HP to 25HP per second ►► Healing from damage changed from 1% per second of the target max HP to 50% of the periodic damage ►► Can devour mechanical units, but cannot heal from them ►► Can devour heroes, but lasts 2 seconds ►► On target kill reloads Undergound Attack ►► Cannot heal on digesting illusions and summons ►► Receiving damage counts as 0.05 second of duration, so attacking the worm helps puke out devoured units
Now the unit is much more interesting on practice. A decent tank with a bit more punch. The tunnel and devour have more versatility. While it may be stronger on paper due to how it can snowball devours, the worm might get bruised a lot on the frontline. So attacking them directly will reward the enemy since it would free the units inside a bit faster. Still that's an expensive unit to tech into and to upkeep. An air attack was added to bring a bit more AA help later, especially against either swarms of unarmored flyers or thicc fortified custom super-heavy airships. At least this is from where I would start before testing it in practice.
Sheep
You wanted to give a healing unit at tier 2, an essential. However on practice it has several problems. ☼ It can get owned too easily with AoE, wasting the healing ☼ 250 speed won't get it following your army around that easy ☼ It looks like a regular sheep with no TC, making it hard to distinguish ☼ That's actually a spammable unit so it takes additional micro to bring them around ☼ 50 gold for 150 AoE healing adds up pretty quickly in terms of cost, making it completely outclassed by the moth base healing. ☼ The nightmare sheep ►► Too RNG and is just free XP feeding for enemy heroes ; even if you update it to temper the RNG ►► Very very high damage per dice, it scales too well ►► Super high armor too, affected by techs ►► Friendly fire, even worse at tier 3 attack techs
If it was a summoned unit from some kind of shepherd I would encourage it, however that's a clutch, gold intensive and easily walled healer. Look you can pick a villager man and make it a shepherd ! It is like a critter no ?
Wizarding Lizard
Giving offensive bonus is good, but the two first spell synergy is too strong. +35% damage multiplied by -6 armor makes a deadly combinaison. The permanent hex is also very strong and the 2 food lizard spammable ; even if the max target level is 3. Making it 3 food with a bit more mana pool would be a bit more allright. You may replace the permanent hex with a regular hex, with why not a debuff on the target after it morphes back to its regular form. The unit has room to gain more custom effects and synergy. In the end I would increase the cooldown of the armor debuff, and reduce its duration.
Bunny reaper
Light armor... Light armor... Light armor !!! Whyyyyyyyyyyy ???!!! You loooooove to make ground melee units receive x2 pierce damage that badly ?! Even with heavy or unarmored armor it is just too expensive... You also have too many melee units (except the reworked beaver) so its place is quite compromized. Carrot Juice (or Carrot Mixer as told in caster spell names) could also benefit from being auto.
The problem of melee glass cannons is their unability to stay viable in the heat of the battle. Your faction do not have sufficient defensive support for your bunnies, so the risk-reward is not in our favor ! Also it gets hardly punished by disabling moves. Less DPS = less healing.
In the end it would deserve to be reworked into a 4 food fast raiding unit with high punch. You can also make it a more versatile support unit planting carrots everywhere so friendly units can eat them up to heal.
Moth
I'd say the healing is a tad too strong, and the Moth being affected by both spellcaster and regular techs makes them a bit too cheap overall. Reduce its damage per dice and base HP would make it more balanced ; or you could bring it into the 3 food power scale and keep most of its current stats. Is it intended to carry Deadly Polen ? Kaleidoscope is very strong, too strong in fact. The spammable aspect and the debuffs can disable whole armies with no much ways to counter it.
Owl
Quite overtuned. High armor, high scalability (20 damage per dice !!!), and could be a deadly doomstack. It also has a bit of redundancy with the raven having some magic damage dealing role.
Ice Guard
Could be an interesting unit if you had not that much close ranged units. It doesn't have much usage beside some tanking abilities. When a medium armor tank can easily wall magic, pierce and siege units, it doesn't have the depth of a Mountain Giant. It also doesn't target air despite its ranged attack.
Ice Ramp
Very broken for multiple reasons ☼ Normal damage type, which threatens a lot ranged units and heroes which are supposed to be resistant to tower fire ☼ Very cheap for its provided DPS ☼ The bouncing attack has no damage factor, so each target receive 100% of the damage...
On the other hand I'm failing to understand your logic. Why is it unarmored by default ? You realy like to make stuff which were supposed to be ranged-resistant weak to piercing damage. They melt much too easily in the early game. It looks like you made a static huntress and forgot it was a structure.
Ice Solidification
This upgrade complexify the balance of your faction a lot, because swapping around armor types is dangerous. Makes unit too resistant to all damage but also rewarding enemies having siege units under hand... Why not just adding a cold aura to structures and make the units freeze nearby enemies on death at night ? Or maybe increasing the HP and armor of structures during night. There's a lot of ways to make it both more stable and interesting, I am only scratching the surface !
White stag ☼ Could benefit from custom hero stats ☼ Semi ranged ? Do you meant short ranged ? ☼ The deer synergy is also interesting, but beware to not make them add power for free, compensate by reducing a bit the impact of the base abilities ☼ Leaf whirl might consume deers too fast without control
Penguin King ☼ Could benefit from custom hero stats ☼ Royal nap should also heal sleeping friendly units, with a reduced rate. This can add early healing for your forces during creeping ! ☼ Cold aura is very strong, and has very high stacking with your other disabling abilities. Either reduce the range or reduce the effect. In both case remove the movement speed reduction against enemy heroes because it traps them too easily. ☼ It would be funnier for the King's army to spawn instead a big ass ice robot, but it's fine as it is. Beware of XP feeding to enemy heroes. If I could add something, it participates in the overclogging of fights... ☼ In practice it looks more like a support hero
Goat ☼ Could benefit from custom hero stats ☼ Magic damage is soaked a lot against hero armor. You might instead make the goat damage pure and unafected by enemy hero armor value ☼ Two passive abilities in regular abilities is very depreciated. You could fuse the two passive together to leave space for a third more utilitarian ability. On the other hand you can add to the battle scars an active effect, for example burry the target undergound. ☼ Duel disrupts the battle too harshly, since both heroes will soak up absurd external damage. You can instead make them invulnerable, trigger manually their damage to each others with a very fast attack rate. It's a tricky case... ☼ In practice it looks more like an assassin.
Annoying Fly ☼ Could benefit from custom hero stats ☼ 1 base HP makes the stats odd. It's generally a bad idea to change base HP unless to make a slower hero a bit tankier. If you want to make the hero squishy, give it a lower strength base, strength bonus per level and lower base armor. ☼ Dodging tactics is much too expensive. 7 mana per second just for a +5% evasion rate than the Demon Hunter is ridiculous. You can instead give it a passive evasion which can be higher through mana consumption, even giving spell shield ! ☼ I would suspect some balance issues with Disturbance. While it encourages the player to switch target often, it may give a too low or high punch for a hero ability. ☼ Red slash might be too devastating when there's no many targets available. I would add a threshold per target so it won't anihilate a lone high leveled hero for free.
Items
They are quite forgettable, even though you wanted to add day/night synergy ☼ The sun/moon stones may look interesting on paper but they take a lot of precious tier 1 item slots. ☼ The resillient seed is much too expensive and situationnal. With that price you could simply grow trees in the targeted location instead, giving some kind of HP regen to nearby friendly units for a duration ☼ Flyers doesn't add much, it spawns very frail units prone to die from AoE and clogs even more your battle field.
From best to worse
VS] When Vinz and Spellbound make something together on Warcraft 3
S] Great, elegant, extra thicc, easily hooks the mind
A] Good. Nothing much to say except nitpick
B] Genuinely OK, but can be better in many ways
C] Average. Not bad, not good. C- would be "meh"
D] Flawed, or insignificant
E] Unstable, badly made, or just broken
F] Fatal error, ruins the rest
AestheticsC+ How well the graphics blends with Warcraft 3 while being elegant
The hand painted icons gives a genuine feel, but most of the units lacks the propper animations and TC to be respectable. I concur the lack of resources on the hive so it has a lot of margin to improve. On the other hand the choices are solid with what you had under hand. Some scale swaps and model tweaks would do a great job.
Fluff S- The epicness, spice, philosophy and background of the faction
The main strong point of your faction. I absolutely adore the intent behind and how it was exploited in some places. The hero names and the bits of lore are tasty snacks along the way. However the implementation doesn't make justice out of it. Completely nuts faction with this kind of assumed fluff has a soft spot in my heart, and is a breath of fresh air in the plethora of bland boilerplate Warcraft lore-based custom factions. It also has the potential to go even more crazy and I'm not lying. Don't hesitate to go further ! Heroes are charismatic & inspired, the revolution is there, the cards are in your hand...
Feel & juice A- How fun is it to play the faction, how well the faction gives you positive feedback
I'm giving it a good notation despite the numerous implementation flaws. The custom abilities gives rewarding depths in terms of VFX, but everyone is not sat around the same table. In other words it is a side effect of the balance & strategy issues of your faction.
Strategy and tactic D- How the mechanics blends together, giving the faction its unique approach
Outside the custom abilities and the funky fluff, it is a classic faction having numerous issues stacking together against us ; and the problem comes from the latter. Being by the book isn't an issue at all, and I can respect that choice if it was made volontarily. I would prefer safety over funky. That being said : ☼ You clearly lack ground anti-air abilities from tier 1 and your heroes do not bring enough support on the battlefield in the early game. ☼ The sheep is impratical even with buffs ☼ Too many melee and short ranged units, which can clog the fight a lot and sacrifice too much each of their potential together, or it makes them too risky to use alone ☼ This coupled by a lack of clear crowd control abilities... you just transform fights into chaotic slugfests instead of shifting it to your advantage... ☼ You clearly don't understand how armor types work, that makes units having completely other roles than announced for when not utterly useless on the spot. ☼ The day/night bonuses could be used as a better material for custom factionwide effects ; individual statistic bonuses are fine but doesn't bring much leverage. I am not talking about balance there, it's another matter.
Balance E How its strengths leave space to the rest, does it blends gameplay-wise together with the other 4 races
That hurts a lot. ☼ Units are either overtuned (say hallo to my 14 food) or useless ☼ You get stomped by air rushes ☼ Absence of healing at tier 1 ☼ Very weak to piercing damage
Content D- Does the faction feels complete compared to its intent and the other races
☼ Too many units, spreading roles too much ☼ Even with that, some roles overlaps each others (aka too many melee) ☼ Even with 4 full custom heroes, some of their abilities could be fused together and made more complete ☼ Forgettable items
Overall you might need to sacrifice one unit or two and changing the role of others ; the changes I suggested partially alleviates that.
Handling & ergonomics B Does this faction have the proper data shown, how easy is it to understand
☼ Descriptions are plenty but could benefit to be more precise ☼ The tiny models make the micro a bit teddious ☼ You might need to manage too many unit types at the same time, which makes the learning curve a bit too harsh than intended (aka the numerous summons) ☼ Despite all of that some feedback signs are right and are on good tracks. Do not hesitate to polish the others further.
Triggers, code, overall polishing B- Is the map correctly coded, no leaks, have efficient algorithm, are details taken care of
This is a very mixed bag with a lot of small annoying details. ☼ Good clean JASS out there with a lot of constants to play arround. The next step would be to switch the GUI trigger calls into the JASS script ☼ I have not seen memory leaks and I'm pretty sure they are taken care of ☼ Remember to compare the square of distances instead of the distances for optimization ☼ Take in account the collision size of units when AoE group selecting in some cases ☼ Why spawned Ice Guard and Penguin Cannon are seperate unit IDs ? When applying timed life to a unit its food usage is automatically removed. The only downside is the very brief upkeep cost updating but is not much of a bother. ☼ Remember to take care of ►► Attack damage point/backswing ►► Projectile launch X/Y/Z ►► Repair cost = creation cost, even on organic units to prevent future problems from other custom abilities ►► Custom hero stats ►► Avoid replacing units through ability effects ►► Replace BJ functions by their common versions
Contest rules A Only relevant in a Tech tree contest
Despite the blatant balance & strategy issues, it does the job. Maybe critters aren't creeps so that could play against you.
Overall tier A-
A lot of improvements are required to increase the notation there, but that's a good start. You have the potential to go to S+ after the desserved reworks. Much of the issues are low hanging fruits, and even if you aren't addressing the main strategical issues some balance changes alone would definitely upgrade the experience.
Personal taste B+ No impact on the rest of the notation, just by curiosity
I'm holding myself back from reworking from the ground up this faction due to the lack of IRL time ; despite my motivation to do so. That's one of the most original & complete faction I have met on the hive so far, excluding my works. I'm saying that because it's rare to see factions standing out like that, and we could expect other rookies rising up and taking the lead ! This has potential but is actually not very exploited : the statistical choices you made irritated my game designer senses in both ways...
Two stars for now, three after balance changes, four after reworks, five when fully polished.
General ☼ The lack of trivial healing hurts a lot, especially in the early game when you need to creep. ☼ Your main building spawns at Tree of Life distance, thus you need 3/4 skins to gather at day/night, making your economy slightly too advantageous food-wise
Well, that was the goal. Scouting for predators and surviving an attack fit the faction theme quite well.
I admit I might have been a bit too heavy-handed tho.
Because I wanted them to be great scout as well.
But there might a middle ground with a good base movement speed and better speed when receiving damage.
While you won't get much upgrades in the early game and late game DPS & spells outclass any armor they could manage to get, giving attack and armor upgrades to your workers is outside Warcraft 3 standards - I'm not completely against it per se however it doesn't give anything interesting.
Roach
[...] ☼ You can't change the color & alpha of an attached effect, since it's tied to the target color & alpha strictly ☼ Particles effects aren't affected by alpha
Well, I wanted something that would give a clear indicator of range which could fit the theme.
Didn't really find more discreet models that could do the job. Feel free to suggest some if you happen to see something better.
☼ In the triggers you are comparing the distances and not the square of distances. To compute a coordinate distance it uses a Square Root function which is expensive. Doing SquareRoot((x1-x2)²+(xy-y2)²) <= distance is the exact same equivalent as (x1-x2)²+(xy-y2)² <= distance²
☼ Another trick is to select units a bit further away, and compare the squared distance with (range + unit collision size)², so it catches up a bit more easily units
Yeah, that's an issue when working with models designed to be small critters and not true units
I lacked the time to properly fix all models to not use scaling values.
☼ The 0+1D1 hurts a lot, with such a low damage and AoE it makes fights quite hard to unfold. It is as tanky as a footman but has low effect on the battlefield.
The roach attack is there only to enable it to trigger its ability.
I don't think it is that useless on the battlefield, but seeing the feedback, I'll probably buff its ability damage a bit.
☼ The Roach infestation is just free XP for enemy heroes. You spawn 2 level 2 roaches which are very easy to clear out. Even if the tech had its negative cost it is not even worth. I would have expected an evasion bonus to reflect its unkillable aspect.
First, great catch, it shouldn't be level 2, but level 1, like skeleton warrior.
Not sure about evasion bonus.
However, I like your suggestion below about reviving and I'll probably implement something similar.
Its ability can attack air because it is thematically airborne and thus can reach them.
Its attack can target air units because it needed a way to trigger its ability against air unit even when not focused.
This is how I would update it ☼ Scale decreased from 2.5 to 1 ☼ Model scale adjusted to be 3x bigger ☼ Base damage increased from 0 to 5 ☼ Damage per dice increased from 1 to 2 ☼ Cannot longer attack air ☼ Attack cooldown decreased from 2.9 to 1.9 ☼ Damage/Backswing point decreased from 0.5/0.5 to 0.2/0.2 ☼ Repair cost adjusted to its base cost ☼ HP regen increased from 0.25 to 0.5 ☼ Putrid smell ►► Base damage increased from 5/3/1 to 5 ►► No longer stacks ►► If not longer under the effect of the effect, it still receives 1 damage per second for 5 seconds ►► Effect adjusted so it is more transparent ►► New tier 2 tech to improve the following <<< Damage stacks by 1 if hit by a putrid spell less than 1 second ago from a different source than the first <<< The organic target has its attack speed reduced by 10% <<< On death the roach places a putrid source on its location for 15 seconds ☼ Roach infestation ►► Small roach spawn removed ►► Increases evasion to 15% ►► When killed, it has (number of nearby friendly roaches withing 300) chances over 5 to instantly regain all its HP instead of dying ; 180 seconds reload during which the evasion is disabled
Now it gets more versatile and better scales itself in late game ; with less XP feeding for the enemy. Its role is to soak up damage in front and dissuade bio forces to engage.
This is where I'll disagree with you.
Your updates destroy the intended design.
► It is meant to not have attack. The only purpose of its attack is to trigger its ability and thus prevent the Putrid smell loop to be always on. ► The core of its ability was to have a stacking AoE, removing it would only make it an other disease cloud (which feels event more true with the putrid source on death location), which I do not want. This unit should be spammable early, not be something where you would only want one or two to have the AoE effect, but not more or you would lose too much value (like how abomination is often played). ► Being able to damage air unit is important, as they're the only unit in the faction that can do so in early.
However, the Roach Infestation changes seems more interesting and fit the theme and design much better.
On the scaling issue, I don't think that is a huge issue as the spell should ignore armor upgrades and thus stay relevant.
Also, they can get quite tanky, especially during the night.
But I could make Putrid Smell gain damage based on Luminescent Strength if you think it is necessary.
I'll start with adding a bit of context here.
This unit have been under a lot of changes over time, and thus have some things that indeed should not be there anymore.
We'll start with the most obvious one, which is something I can't believe I missed during the last play tests
Small armor is strictly reserved for air units, which takes x2 from ranged attack. So your beaver has 250 effective HP against ranged units... and cannot hit them efficiently due to its purely melee ability.
As a cheap siege unit it's even worse. You have a raider with x8 less resistant to towers, 2x less DPS, high collision size (thus cannot stack much in melee) and a medium movement speed.
Beaver (and Bunny Reaper too) had small armor because they had access to an upgrade that make creatures with fur take greatly reduced damage from ranged unit (thematically, an adaptation from hunting).
Well, that idea was scrapped, the upgrade removed, but clearly, two units didn't receive the memo and forgot to change their armor type.
Roaches can hit air unit, so it isn't that bad. True, they will not be able to strike an air army hovering above a forest, but you still can hit them is open land.
If I'm not mistaken, air rushes can only happen at Tier 2, where you should be able to answer with bees.
You do have the capacity to scout your opponent with Skinks and spot their air rush, and thus adapt accordingly.
If anything, the issue of air rush probably lies more in the Aerial Tactics research time.
This is how I would update it ☼ Like for the roach, reduce scale and update the model so it's bigger ☼ Both attacks enabled ☼ Base damage increased from 18/0 to 20/15 ☼ Number of dice adjusted from 2/0 to 1/1 ☼ Damage per dice adjusted from 3/0 to 4/3 ☼ Attack cooldown adjusted from 2/0 to 1.5/1.5 ☼ Attack one can target only structures ☼ Attack two can target ground, air, wards, debris ☼ Attack damage type set from siege/none to normal/pierce ☼ Attack two type set to missile ☼ Attack two projectile art set to dryad missile ☼ Attack two projectile speed increased from 0 to 1200 ☼ Attack two projectile arc increased from 0 to 0.15 ☼ Attack two range increased from 0 to 500 ☼ Armor changed from small to medium ☼ Attack sound changed from medium axe to Metal medium axe ☼ Cost adjusted from 185 25 3 30 to 190 25 3 25 ☼ Collision size reduced from 48 to 24 ☼ Structural Weakness ►► When attacking a structure, increases the ranged attack speed of the beaver by 25% for 20 seconds (it pillages sticks) ►► The first hit against the structure reduces armor by 3, then stacks with each attack by 0.1 up to 6 total ►► Passively increase damage against fortified armor by 300%
It is now a true ranged unit, with siege abilities and much more effective ! A spear thrower beaver makes more sense, since it can craft sticks into sharp edges. I also considered to make it a lumber gatherer, but the skins are enough and would increase a bit the complexity of the early game.
Again, while I can agree on the pointed issues, I feel like the changes would make the unit into something completely different.
The role of the beaver is to compensate the lack of damage on building from Roaches.
I'll make changes, but will probably tend to make it more affordable, faster to make, to enable early base destruction.
Its utility in late stages will be on the armor reduction for other units, and its ability to scale from both Radiant Claws and Luminescent Pelt should avoid it becoming a dead weight.
Sand worm
Holy mother of Dune ? This unit is such a waste of resources. 14 (!!!) food cost, abysmal DPS, slow, accessible in the late game. It fails at every role you gave it. May tank on paper but... 14 food ? With that you can get 6.5 knights with better DPS, speed and versatility...
Knights are 4 food cost, which means a sand worm is 3.5 knights. I will assume that's a typo
While on base values, you might get more stats on knights, Sand worms has abilities that can hold power (it seems you disagree on that, but will that later), and also cost less than 3.5 knights.
Although, I might have nerfed a bit much to still justify the 14 food cost.
The thousands bits is unusable since you can only have few worms and it has such a slow cooldown. Yeah you can disable 4 units at once on paper but against your faction the enemy would rush your ass down so you won't get that upgrade. 75 seconds reload time is brutal, on a 1000 HP unit that's 25 damage per second, so it will be consumed in 40 seconds, which is impossible since the unit is expelled after 30 seconds...
The thousand bites isn't meant to be a guaranteed kill on every unit, otherwise it wouldn't have max duration.
The guaranteed kill threshold on a full HP unit is ~640 max hp. To be fair, this threshold is still quite high.
But it seems you overlooked a crucial point:
On kill, the sand worms heals a huge amount of HPs, and reset its CDs.
Which means it can eats a whole army back to back as long as they die.
Sand Worms should target units that either have low max HPs or are at ~60% HPs to enter the deadly loop of Underground Attack > Thousand Bites > Heal > Repeat.
x axis: unit max HPs
y axis: time to kill (if full hp)
I based the ability on Kodo Beast cargo. Not sure why it has 2 slots as Kodo can only devour only one by one if I'm not mistaken, but well, doesn't really matter
Firstly, because i didn't think about that ?
And I need to test some things, but wouldn't that prevent the display of the devoured unit and enemy sight on devoured unit ?
The enemy can just spam air units to exploit your lack of anti-air. Unless the enemy spams light unit and let them at range of your worm this unit has a tedious place in the roster.
I'm considering allowing A Thousand Bites to target air unit, as it could be coherent for the worms to "jump and catch" an air unit.
But if the enemy starts spamming air units, then your go-to are Ravens and Bees to offer your army some protection.
I find it quite funny that would think Roach being able to attack air is weird, but would make the sand worm attack air.
I do think having a weakness like not being able to attack air unit is fine on such a unit.
If air is truly an issue, that would mean needing to buff existing anti-air units or others sources on other units, but Sand Worm is designed to be a threat on ground mainly.
☼ Underground attack ►► Is now auto, by default enabled ►► Reload time decreased from 90 to 20 seconds ►► The stun can target magic immune (because in the lib they cannot) ►► Stun duration against resistant units reduced from 2 to 0.5 seconds (because in the lib it doesn't matter) ►► Has double damage against structures ►► Cannot longer target hidden units
How would you make it auto cast ? On attack ?
The Sand Worm is meant to rampage on units, so I don't see the point in damaging structures.
CD is high because of the reset on Thousand Bites kills, because I guess I could lower it.
Excluding hidden units is something I'll look into.
☼ Thousand bites ►► Cargo slots changed from 4 to a total of 10 unit-levels (if level 0 counts as level 1) ►► Reload time reduced from 75 to 10 seconds ►► Digest damage reduced from 15HP +1% of the unit max HP to 25HP per second ►► Healing from damage changed from 1% per second of the target max HP to 50% of the periodic damage ►► Can devour mechanical units, but cannot heal from them ►► Can devour heroes, but lasts 2 seconds ►► On target kill reloads Undergound Attack ►► Cannot heal on digesting illusions and summons ►► Receiving damage counts as 0.05 second of duration, so attacking the worm helps puke out devoured units
There is only 2 cargo slots at the moment, not that it matters a lot.
The healing is not 1% per second but 25% max HP on kill.
Putting that aside, devouring mechanical unit could be done, why not.
Not a fan of devouring heroes, as it forces a very short duration, which you don't want anyway as you want resets on kill. I feel like you would almost never want to use it on heroes and it would only lead to frustrating miss clicks.
10 seconds CD mitigated by damage reducing the duration could work as it would make enemies want to focus it, and thus improve its role as a tank. Will see how that feels playing it.
Sheep
You wanted to give a healing unit at tier 2, an essential. However on practice it has several problems. ☼ It can get owned too easily with AoE, wasting the healing ☼ 250 speed won't get it following your army around that easy ☼ It looks like a regular sheep with no TC, making it hard to distinguish ☼ That's actually a spammable unit so it takes additional micro to bring them around ☼ 50 gold for 150 AoE healing adds up pretty quickly in terms of cost, making it completely outclassed by the moth base healing.
Technically, the Moth is the Tier 2 unit in the Critter Revolution.
The Sheep is a nice bonus, but isn't meant as a full healer. Take it more like like a walking scroll of healing that is more cost efficient, doesn't take item slots, but can be denied by enemy if they pay attention.
AoE is an issue tho, I agree on that.
I will probably give it more base HPs to tank those, and set it to 1 when activating Lamb Sacrifice.
TC would be nice indeed, but I didn't have time to learn how to modify models to add that.
☼ The nightmare sheep ►► Too RNG and is just free XP feeding for enemy heroes ; even if you update it to temper the RNG ►► Very very high damage per dice, it scales too well ►► Super high armor too, affected by techs ►► Friendly fire, even worse at tier 3 attack techs
I agree friendly fire doesn't feel good. To be honest, I thought i removed it.
How is it free Xp for heroes ? It is quite tanky, even more with upgrades and at night. Not that easy to get the XP imo
If it was a summoned unit from some kind of shepherd I would encourage it, however that's a clutch, gold intensive and easily walled healer. Look you can pick a villager man and make it a shepherd ! It is like a critter no ?
Wizarding Lizard
Giving offensive bonus is good, but the two first spell synergy is too strong. +35% damage multiplied by -6 armor makes a deadly combinaison. The permanent hex is also very strong and the 2 food lizard spammable ; even if the max target level is 3. Making it 3 food with a bit more mana pool would be a bit more allright. You may replace the permanent hex with a regular hex, with why not a debuff on the target after it morphes back to its regular form. The unit has room to gain more custom effects and synergy. In the end I would increase the cooldown of the armor debuff, and reduce its duration.
Bunny reaper
Light armor... Light armor... Light armor !!! Whyyyyyyyyyyy ???!!! You loooooove to make ground melee units receive x2 pierce damage that badly ?!
Even with heavy or unarmored armor it is just too expensive... You also have too many melee units (except the reworked beaver) so its place is quite compromized. Carrot Juice (or Carrot Mixer as told in caster spell names) could also benefit from being auto.
The problem of melee glass cannons is their unability to stay viable in the heat of the battle. Your faction do not have sufficient defensive support for your bunnies, so the risk-reward is not in our favor ! Also it gets hardly punished by disabling moves. Less DPS = less healing.
In the end it would deserve to be reworked into a 4 food fast raiding unit with high punch. You can also make it a more versatile support unit planting carrots everywhere so friendly units can eat them up to heal.
I agree Bunny Reaper didn't land quite as well as I wanted.
There is option for it to become the anti-air late game you've been craving, throwing carrots at air enemies.
Moth
I'd say the healing is a tad too strong, and the Moth being affected by both spellcaster and regular techs makes them a bit too cheap overall. Reduce its damage per dice and base HP would make it more balanced ; or you could bring it into the 3 food power scale and keep most of its current stats. Is it intended to carry Deadly Polen ? Kaleidoscope is very strong, too strong in fact. The spammable aspect and the debuffs can disable whole armies with no much ways to counter it.
Will probably bring it to 3 food costs, as it is the main source of healing and thus need to not disappear too fast in fights.
It is intended to carry Deadly Pollen indeed.
Kaleidoscope might be on the strong side indeed, and would benefit from more testing in PvP, as I feel like its impact is much less needed against computers.
Well, Owl being the only real attack unit on the night side, I wanted to make sure it justified upgrading Luminescent Strength. Might have been a bit heavy-handed.
I'll probably lower armor upgrade from 2 to 1, as is true it can get very high at night.
Ice Guard
Could be an interesting unit if you had not that much close ranged units. It doesn't have much usage beside some tanking abilities. When a medium armor tank can easily wall magic, pierce and siege units, it doesn't have the depth of a Mountain Giant. It also doesn't target air despite its ranged attack.
Mountain Giant is a Tiers 3 unit while Ice Guard is a Tiers 2, so yeah, it should not be at the same level.
Ice Guard is meant to be a tanking option against magic heavy armies, and a nice unit when defending your base.
I could make them target air, but I'm worried it could bait some people into massing them against air, which probably would not be the best option.
Ice Ramp
Very broken for multiple reasons ☼ Normal damage type, which threatens a lot ranged units and heroes which are supposed to be resistant to tower fire ☼ Very cheap for its provided DPS ☼ The bouncing attack has no damage factor, so each target receive 100% of the damage...
On the other hand I'm failing to understand your logic. Why is it unarmored by default ? You realy like to make stuff which were supposed to be ranged-resistant weak to piercing damage. They melt much too easily in the early game. It looks like you made a static huntress and forgot it was a structure.
Normal damage isn't intended, thought I fixed it, and never looked back when clearly I should have. Will become pierce.
Its high DPS was intended with the downside of being quite vulnerable in early / during the day.
Your base having other defensive options with Emergency hideout and boar summoning make the weakness acceptable.
Ice Solidification
This upgrade complexify the balance of your faction a lot, because swapping around armor types is dangerous. Makes unit too resistant to all damage but also rewarding enemies having siege units under hand... Why not just adding a cold aura to structures and make the units freeze nearby enemies on death at night ? Or maybe increasing the HP and armor of structures during night. There's a lot of ways to make it both more stable and interesting, I am only scratching the surface !
The upgrade concern mainly structures, which was made to make a real identity of night time being a good time to defend, and day time a true attack window for your enemies.
The only unit that get that upgrade is the Ice Guard, which is supposed to be a good tank.
I will answer this for all of them.
I took stats from a hero having a similar role and I think those stats fit them quite well.
I'm not sure it necessary fiddle one point to an other stat for the sake of it
☼ The deer synergy is also interesting, but beware to not make them add power for free, compensate by reducing a bit the impact of the base abilities ☼ Leaf whirl might consume deers too fast without control
I did try to remove some power when no deers were used, except on Leaf Whirl where it was pure bonus.
Leaf Whirl should not over consume deers as only the first instance of damage per cast per hero will trigger a deer death. I put that rule specifically to avoid a deer genocide
Penguin King ☼ Could benefit from custom hero stats ☼ Royal nap should also heal sleeping friendly units, with a reduced rate. This can add early healing for your forces during creeping !
I had a heal (at 50% efficiency if I remember well) at first, but it felt quite strong when used in all out fight against an enemy.
Might try to add it again, and play with values.
☼ Cold aura is very strong, and has very high stacking with your other disabling abilities. Either reduce the range or reduce the effect. In both case remove the movement speed reduction against enemy heroes because it traps them too easily.
Range is already at 350. I feel like reducing it further would feel very frustrating to use.
I guess I'll play with the slow values.
Maybe heroes should be immune to all effects, as it would make sense a hero would not really care about a Penguin King despising them
Goat ☼ Could benefit from custom hero stats ☼ Magic damage is soaked a lot against hero armor. You might instead make the goat damage pure and unafected by enemy hero armor value
☼ Two passive abilities in regular abilities is very depreciated. You could fuse the two passive together to leave space for a third more utilitarian ability. On the other hand you can add to the battle scars an active effect, for example burry the target undergound.
☼ Duel disrupts the battle too harshly, since both heroes will soak up absurd external damage. You can instead make them invulnerable, trigger manually their damage to each others with a very fast attack rate. It's a trick
I don't think this is a true issue ? It should be quite clear that those heroes shouldn't be targeted, and it would be a skill issue if you keep hitting them
Annoying Fly ☼ Could benefit from custom hero stats ☼ 1 base HP makes the stats odd. It's generally a bad idea to change base HP unless to make a slower hero a bit tankier. If you want to make the hero squishy, give it a lower strength base and bonus per level.
The lower base stats are here to compensate the flying part of the hero, which is a powerful innate stat.
I could make it 5 or 10 HP to smooth it and make it less visible
☼ Dodging tactics is much too expensive. 7 mana per second just for a +5% evasion rate than the Demon Hunter is ridiculous. You can instead give it a passive evasion which can be higher through mana consumption, even giving spell shield !
Illidan's evasion is 10/20/30%, Annoying Fly is 20/35/50% + 5-15% (on level) at night, so a bit more than 5% bonus
Also, the Annoying Fly doesn't need much mana on other spells, so I feel like it's ok ?
☼ I would suspect some balance issues with Disturbance. While it encourages the player to switch target often, it may give a too low or high punch for a hero ability.
I do think that it gets really strong when maximizing its output.
I would need a test from a player much better than me at the game to see how much OP it is, or if it's really a trade off to focus your attention on it.
☼ Red slash might be too devastating when there's no many targets available. I would add a threshold per target so it won't anihilate a lone high leveled hero for free.
That hero shouldn't have underestimated the fly
Jokes aside, I tested several versions: ► Lowering base damage but procing disturbance (and thus rewarding multi target as switching targets add lots of damage). Was a bit too strong. ► Adding a damage reduction for consecutive hits on a same target. This one increased the RNG a bit too much when hitting an army, making the ulti unreliable.
I'm not sure on how to balance that without making the spell too frustrating to use.
Items
They are quite forgettable, even though you wanted to add day/night synergy ☼ The sun/moon stones may look interesting on paper but they take a lot of precious tier 1 item slots.
I'm thinking about fusing the two items, making it a "During day, creates artificial night. During night creates artificial day."
That would free an item spot.
☼ The resillient seed is much too expensive and situationnal. With that price you could simply grow trees in the targeted location instead, giving some kind of HP regen to nearby friendly units for a duration
Flyers are here to enable a more efficient early harass strategy, and having a bit more focused fire on creeping if needed. And of course, because it was fun thematically
AestheticsC+ How well the graphics blends with Warcraft 3 while being elegant
The hand painted icons gives a genuine feel, but most of the units lacks the propper animations and TC to be respectable. I concur the lack of resources on the hive so it has a lot of margin to improve. On the other hand the choices are solid with what you had under hand. Some scale swaps and model tweaks would do a great job.
Fluff S- The epicness, spice, philosophy and background of the faction
The main strong point of your faction. I absolutely adore the intent behind and how it was exploited in some places. The hero names and the bits of lore are tasty snacks along the way. However the implementation doesn't make justice out of it. Completely nuts faction with this kind of assumed fluff has a soft spot in my heart, and is a breath of fresh air in the plethora of bland boilerplate Warcraft lore-based custom factions. It also has the potential to go even more crazy and I'm not lying. Don't hesitate to go further ! Heroes are charismatic & inspired, the revolution is there, the cards are in your hand...
Feel & juice A- How fun is it to play the faction, how well the faction gives you positive feedback
I'm giving it a good notation despite the numerous implementation flaws. The custom abilities gives rewarding depths in terms of VFX, but everyone is not sat around the same table. In other words it is a side effect of the balance & strategy issues of your faction.
Strategy and tactic D- How the mechanics blends together, giving the faction its unique approach
Outside the custom abilities and the funky fluff, it is a classic faction having numerous issues stacking together against us ; and the problem comes from the latter. Being by the book isn't an issue at all, and I can respect that choice if it was made volontarily. I would prefer safety over funky. That being said : ☼ You clearly lack ground anti-air abilities from tier 1 and your heroes do not bring enough support on the battlefield in the early game. ☼ The sheep is impratical even with buffs ☼ Too many melee and short ranged units, which can clog the fight a lot and sacrifice too much each of their potential together, or it makes them too risky to use alone ☼ This coupled by a lack of clear crowd control abilities... you just transform fights into chaotic slugfests instead of shifting it to your advantage... ☼ You clearly don't understand how armor types work, that makes units having completely other roles than announced for when not utterly useless on the spot. ☼ The day/night bonuses could be used as a better material for custom factionwide effects ; individual statistic bonuses are fine but doesn't bring much leverage. I am not talking about balance there, it's another matter.
Balance E How its strengths leave space to the rest, does it blends gameplay-wise together with the other 4 races
That hurts a lot. ☼ Units are either overtuned (say hallo to my 14 food) or useless ☼ You get stomped by air rushes ☼ Absence of healing at tier 1 ☼ Very weak to piercing damage
Content D- Does the faction feels complete compared to its intent and the other races ☼ Too many units, spreading roles too much ☼ Even with that, some roles overlaps each others (aka too many melee) ☼ Even with 4 full custom heroes, some of their abilities could be fused together and made more complete ☼ Forgettable items
Overall you might need to sacrifice one unit or two and changing the role of others ; the changes I suggested partially alleviates that.
Handling & ergonomics B Does this faction have the proper data shown, how easy is it to understand ☼ Descriptions are plenty but could benefit to be more precise ☼ The tiny models make the micro a bit teddious ☼ You might need to manage too many unit types at the same time, which makes the learning curve a bit too harsh than intended (aka the numerous summons) ☼ Despite all of that some feedback signs are right and are on good tracks. Do not hesitate to polish the others further.
Triggers, code, overall polishing B- Is the map correctly coded, no leaks, have efficient algorithm, are details taken care of
This is a very mixed bag with a lot of small annoying details. ☼ Good clean JASS out there with a lot of constants to play arround. The next step would be to switch the GUI trigger calls into the JASS script ☼ I have not seen memory leaks and I'm pretty sure they are taken care of ☼ Remember to compare the square of distances instead of the distances for optimization ☼ Take in account the collision size of units when AoE group selecting in some cases ☼ Remember to take care of ►► Attack damage point/backswing ►► Projectile launch X/Y/Z ►► Repair cost = creation cost, even on organic units to prevent future problems from other custom abilities ►► Custom hero stats ►► Avoid replacing units through ability effects ►► Replace BJ functions by their common versions
Contest rules A Only relevant in a Tech tree contest
Despite the blatant balance & strategy issues, it does the job. Maybe critters aren't creeps so that could play against you.
Overall tier A-
A lot of improvements are required to increase the notation there, but that's a good start. You have the potential to go to S+ after the desserved reworks. Much of the issues are low hanging fruits, and even if you aren't addressing the main strategical issues some balance changes alone would definitely upgrade the experience.
Personal taste B+ No impact on the rest of the notation, just by curiosity
I'm holding myself back from reworking from the ground up this faction due to the lack of IRL time ; despite my motivation to do so. That's one of the most original & complete faction I have met on the hive so far, excluding my works. I'm saying that because it's rare to see factions standing out like that, and we could expect other rookies rising up and taking the lead ! This has potential but is actually not very exploited : the statistical choices you made irritated my game designer senses in both ways...
As it's mainly a repeat on what was said earlier, I won't answer point by point here.
Although, I'd like to have some precisions on those points: ☼ Descriptions are plenty but could benefit to be more precise
I feel like my tooltip already give much more info that standard tooltips. Where would you say it lacks precision ?
☼ your heroes do not bring enough support on the battlefield in the early game.
What do you mean by that ?
Are they too weak early compared to other heroes ?
Are they too "selfish" and do not help other units ?
Something else ?
Oh and also:
Maybe critters aren't creeps so that could play against you.
I have explicit authorization to use critters. I was going to drop the idea when the definition of creeps was made, but it seems some lobbying worked and thus the idea was accepted
Well, that was a long post to make.
I guess I'll have more work to do for v1.01. Will wait for the judges feedback to do so tho.
Well, that was the goal. Scouting for predators and surviving an attack fit the faction theme quite well.
I admit I might have been a bit too heavy-handed tho.
Beware of the fallacious argument of the Texan shooter : drawing a target around the bullet hit doesn't make you a sharpshooter.
And like said earlier it is not the only problem of that speed.
The other problem, in a lesser extent, is it would spot danger much too easily during basic base chores, or when expanding ; amplifying the difficulty for the enemy to raid you. Another way to find is to give that speed and sight range through a tech, could be Tier 1.5 or 2 ; for example Hot Bloded.
Or even stacking it with anxiety of not being in your base : the sense are increased and so the movement speed.
Well, I wanted something that would give a clear indicator of range which could fit the theme.
Didn't really find more discreet models that could do the job. Feel free to suggest some if you happen to see something better.
It is not clear since it has the over saturating effect. You can edit the model and reduce the alpha of all particle emitters ; that should do some job.
First, great catch, it shouldn't be level 2, but level 1, like skeleton warrior.
Not sure about evasion bonus.
However, I like your suggestion below about reviving and I'll probably implement something similar.
Its ability can attack air because it is thematically airborne and thus can reach them.
Its attack can target air units because it needed a way to trigger its ability against air unit even when not focused.
The side effect is they would seek unreachable air targets and confuse them. You could simply trigger it when there's an air unit above the roach.
Or give it some kind of short ranged attack against air, spitting goo or something.
The point of anti-air is their range and availability. Here the effect is much much too low against air units and they can disengage trivially. Remember the x2 pierce damage against air ?
► The core of its ability was to have a stacking AoE, removing it would only make it an other disease cloud (which feels event more true with the putrid source on death location), which I do not want. This unit should be spammable early, not be something where you would only want one or two to have the AoE effect, but not more or you would lose too much value (like how abomination is often played).
The stacking effect could have disastrous effect early game against ground. That is why I suggested the stacking to be more consistent and unlocked at tier 2. Then when you transition to heavier tier 3 units the roach is no longer viable on purpose.
Against a mechanical faction you're basically screwed in the early game. The beaver gets holed to death by just basic ranged units and suck against medium armor & heroes.
What was the intended armor type ? My guess beavers medium and bunny heavy. On the other hand making them both unarmored and adding that upgrade to reduce pierce damage by 50% could make some wonders.
Being on purpose do not makes it magically balanced & well placed. Here you have nothing to counter air rushes. The goal of the basic ranged unit (as all faction has) is to soft counter any air threat due to ranged resistance and huge damage multiplier against them. So instead of already having some anti-air when hitting tier 2 you have to build something then train something which is also air to counter air. Having Air to Air abilities is not the problem, it is the fact that it's the only anti-air you have and it comes too late.
If you really want to keep the absence of air attacking units early... at least give an ensnare ability against air.
But it seems you overlooked a crucial point:
On kill, the sand worms heals a huge amount of HPs, and reset its CDs.
Which means it can eats a whole army back to back as long as they die.
Sand Worms should target units that either have low max HPs or are at ~60% HPs to enter the deadly loop of Underground Attack > Thousand Bites > Heal > Repeat.
The loop doesn't come that trivialy. The consumption is slow and the fight might already have ended before the first unit is digested. And that's if the enemy politely let your work snatch one of its boyos.
I mean, some custom spells would have data tied to that handle id, so nulling it could make the system more of a headache. You can also simply dispel stuff on the devoured target.
Oscillating between a slow and fast movement speed makes your faction harder to handle. You have to anticipate all the stat swaps every cycle.
By that I mean it forces the rhythm instead of bringing flesh to your critters. You could work with a lower 20-30 speed bonus and increase the base speed of affected units.
It makes it too unkillable, even more with its high regen and healing abilities. Either make it highly armored or a big HP sponge. Both makes it way too strong. Remember that healing wards are % based. 2 armor is already good and it gets affected by upgrades. Each armor point increases the durability by 6%, and 6% of 2000 is a lot ; which also indirectly makes healing more profitable.
So it's not just tanky, but some scenarium level of resistance.
Technically, the Moth is the Tier 2 unit in the Critter Revolution.
The Sheep is a nice bonus, but isn't meant as a full healer. Take it more like like a walking scroll of healing that is more cost efficient, doesn't take item slots, but can be denied by enemy if they pay attention.
Mountain Giant is a Tiers 3 unit while Ice Guard is a Tiers 2, so yeah, it should not be at the same level.
Ice Guard is meant to be a tanking option against magic heavy armies, and a nice unit when defending your base.
Mountain giants are actually tier 2. Also defensive units are depreciated since most of the time is spend around creeping and finding opportunities. If the enemy target your base you already have defensive abilities through building placement, towers and their abilities.
Here your unit is insufficient and has no much defense against elite tier 3 melee. It's a waste of food for DPS.
So you're giving free opportunities to the enemy to attack you. The only downside of daytime for elves are the lack of regen and no camouflage ; not an absurd defense debuff ! You could maybe change a bit the armor of structures, for example +2-4 at night. Not making them weaker at day !
I had a heal (at 50% efficiency if I remember well) at first, but it felt quite strong when used in all out fight against an enemy.
Might try to add it again, and play with values.
I don't think this is a true issue ? It should be quite clear that those heroes shouldn't be targeted, and it would be a skill issue if you keep hitting them
It messes up with AI, but most importantly it takes additional precious micro out of your units because they would often auto-attack the heroes. This is a serious UX issue. Soaking up tens of thousand of damage is much stronger than simple invulnerability, because the damage would simply redirect to vulnerably targets.
I'm thinking about fusing the two items, making it a "During day, creates artificial night. During night creates artificial day."
That would free an item spot.
Flyers are here to enable a more efficient early harass strategy, and having a bit more focused fire on creeping if needed. And of course, because it was fun thematically
Fun thematically do not mean fun gameplay wise. Wand of necromancy has the advantage to synergise with the dark ritual and dark pact for undeads. Here it has none of it. If you need an item to help creeping then your base units aren't good enough.
More info =/= better info. I'm gonna give you some examples.
☼ Structural weakness doesn't specify it triggers at each attack, but also talks about each "cast" ?
☼ Treasure spotting stealing gold from a unit ? Does that unit had gold in the first place ? Does it removes repair cost ? Does it spawn gold from thin air ? Can it be spammed on the same target ? This is not specified.
☼ Medicinal pollen Is not specifying the healing period, and the cost per unit
☼ Thunder fury should specify it increases inflicted attack damage, not just damage
☼ Solid Ice should specify the provided bonus armor
☼ Great boar calling should specify how much and what each boar adds to the great boar
Etc etc
Most of them are damage dealers or spawn stuff. The Stag is the least problem. The goat is too single target. There's only one aura and is quite small. This has space for growth !
The lower base stats are here to compensate the flying part of the hero, which is a powerful innate stat.
I could make it 5 or 10 HP to smooth it and make it less visible
I completely forgot it was air. And this is a huge problem. It makes too strong at raiding while completely stomped by gargoyles, hippogryphs, air disabling abilities and worst of all Web. You can't even counter it in the early game. Furthermore in critter vs critter if you get rushed by a fly you don't even have any anti-air at tier 1... Make it a ground unit and call it a day. Air heroes is a huge headache for veterans.
Illidan's evasion is 10/20/30%, Annoying Fly is 20/35/50% + 5-15% (on level) at night, so a bit more than 5% bonus
Also, the Annoying Fly doesn't need much mana on other spells, so I feel like it's ok ?
do think that it gets really strong when maximizing its output.
I would need a test from a player much better than me at the game to see how much OP it is, or if it's really a trade off to focus your attention on it.
What was the intended armor type ? My guess beavers medium and bunny heavy. On the other hand making them both unarmored and adding that upgrade to reduce pierce damage by 50% could make some wonders.
I mean, some custom spells would have data tied to that handle id, so nulling it could make the system more of a headache. You can also simply dispel stuff on the devoured target.
Mountain giants are actually tier 2. Also defensive units are depreciated since most of the time is spend around creeping and finding opportunities. If the enemy target your base you already have defensive abilities through building placement, towers and their abilities.
Here your unit is insufficient and has no much defense against elite tier 3 melee. It's a waste of food for DPS.
So you're giving free opportunities to the enemy to attack you. The only downside of daytime for elves are the lack of regen and no camouflage ; not an absurd defense debuff ! You could maybe change a bit the armor of structures, for example +2-4 at night. Not making them weaker at day !
It messes up with AI, but most importantly it takes additional precious micro out of your units because they would often auto-attack the heroes. This is a serious UX issue. Soaking up tens of thousand of damage is much stronger than simple invulnerability, because the damage would simply redirect to vulnerably targets.
I'm not sure tens of thousands of damage could be done during the 20 seconds of duel
Anyway, rendering them invulnerable could also bring other kind of issues on abilities that can't target invulnerable units.
However, I could add something that makes unit targeting the dueling heroes trying to target other close units to avoid absorbing too much damage.
Well, Structural weakness is a casted ability, not a passive on attack, so yeah, it talks about cast, and doesn't say it triggers on attack because it doesn't
☼ Treasure spotting stealing gold from a unit ? Does that unit had gold in the first place ? Does it removes repair cost ? Does it spawn gold from thin air ? Can it be spammed on the same target ? This is not specified.
☼ Medicinal pollen Is not specifying the healing period, and the cost per unit
☼ Thunder fury should specify it increases inflicted attack damage, not just damage
Most of them are damage dealers or spawn stuff. The Stag is the least problem. The goat is too single target. There's only one aura and is quite small. This has space for growth !
I completely forgot it was air. And this is a huge problem. It makes too strong at raiding while completely stomped by gargoyles, hippogryphs, air disabling abilities and worst of all Web.
Air is strong, indeed, which why it has less HP and base armor than other heroes.
Gargoyle and Hippo are a huge threat indeed. Dodging Tactics will be a needed tool to survive when they enter the battlefield.
Web is the most dangerous indeed, but maybe using a fly into spiders isn't a good idea
Didn't you just spend much time explaining every race has an anti-air unit available at Tiers 1 to stop air rushes ?
How isn't it possible to stop a squishy fly ?
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